Spring Break!

Thursday was the day I handed in my two final essays. Twenty pages worth of essays in total. One was eight pages and the other was twelve. What a pain in the butt that was. Did all this while suffering from my cold too. Luckily today I'm only coughing a little bit now. Daniel's all recovered too. However, this means now that my spring break has begun! Yay!

I still have two or three posts I want to write about concerning notable things that happened to me last month, so I'll probably be going back to last month's happenings soon. But for now I'll talk about some more recent experiences of mine.



I celebrated on Thursday by going to Shibuya 109 and picking up a few items for a customer at my shopping service. I managed to do some job hunting at a few nearby stores, too.

The first one I asked at told me that the deadline for applications had already passed. While disappointing, I did appreciate the fact that she didn't act surprised that I could speak Japanese and just spoke to me regularly.

The second store I asked at the manager wasn't in, so they took my resume and said that the shop manager will call me about an interview whenever she gets in. Well, that was Thursday and today is Saturday. Hopefully the manager has a several day break or was sick or something. I wonder how long I should wait before moving on? Though I think they'd at least send my resume back sooner or later. Unfortunately my picture is kind of plain looking, a lot different from how I looked in real life when I asked about a job. First appearances are everything, so I hope the manager will wait until the actual interview to judge me, and doesn't just judge me based on the picture. Maybe I would have been better off just leaving my phone number.

It was funny though, because I asked one of the workers who had actually spoke to me in English beforehand. She didn't seem too surprised I was speaking to her in Japanese, but she told me she had only started two days earlier and took me over to the other three girls working there at the time. I wasn't sure what to say, so after a few seconds of silence the lady whom I had assumed was the manager says, "Can you speak Japanese...?" It was funny, but from there I think it proceeded smoothly enough and I think I managed to appear charismatic and eager enough. The other two girls seemed excited, so hopefully that was a good sign?

In any case, my heart couldn't take asking at a third place that day so I ended up going home. It's so nerve wracking to ask for a job here! But at least I feel comfortable that I have the correct phrase to ask now and I feel like I'm enunciating cheerily and loudly.

I did, however, get the whole "wow your Japanese is great!" thing when I went to a store called d.i.a. This could have to do with the fact that some other foreigners were shopping in there and trying to talk to the shop staff. I really dislike it when I get lumped in with the tourists.



Yesterday I went to the post office to weigh the items for my customer and an old lady stopped halfway while crossing the street to gawk at me. I know I wasn't wearing any makeup because I was just going a few blocks down the street and home, but I don't think I looked too weird. The funny thing is that I feel like this rarely happens to me. Sure. on the train some people will look at me a few seconds longer than normal and some little girls will look at me with some wonder in their eyes, but most don't care at all and I've never felt like people try to get away from me, try not to sit next to me on the train, or just make me feel alien.

Silly old people.



On Thursday I got a message from Maki inviting all of us who went on the Nogal trip (which I participated in on October 1, October 2, and October 3, if you don't remember) and live in the Tokyo area to get together once again. The other girls in my immediate group all agreed and it seems a few other girls who also participated will join us as well. I really hope I can go, I've been wanting to see them all again.

Speaking of Nogal, I guess a documentary of the whole thing aired during the last week. I didn't get to see it, but maybe it's better that I didn't see what a fool I probably had made of myself.